On the Eve of Lent
- stillhotundertheco
- Feb 16, 2021
- 3 min read
February 16, 2021
Shrove Tuesday
Columbus, Ohio
I know that my redeemer lives. Words uttered out of the mouth of Job in unthinkable days and circumstances.[1]
This morning I heard a fine sermon on this portion of Job’s story. It is the particular privilege of serving in a seminary community that I have opportunity to hear such reflections and theological insights with blessed regularity. When the preacher talked about this oath that Job utters: “I know that my redeemer lives” we were reminded that Job was not talking about Jesus, but that Job was trusting that God, as Job’s defender and advocate, had not somehow fallen asleep on the job, had not been cast down in the midst of Job’s defense, but was, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, alive to speak on Job’s behalf.
Could this declaration, “I know that my redeemer lives” be both an affirmation of faith AND a deep lament?
This is the question stirring deeply within and propelling me into Lent this year. If indeed, God lives and moves among us, the complexities of our ongoing struggles seem especially difficult to bear.
It has been an entire liturgical year of experiencing our life together in all of its complexity as both affirmation and lament. There are the obvious places: standing at the graveside, sitting at the bedside. But there are also the places that would normally be filled with pure joy. Welcoming babies into the world, or into the body of Christ. Graduations and weddings and birthdays and anniversaries have been celebrated while tinged with lament. Lament for what ought to have been. Lament for what we had imagined they would be.
Perhaps what the pandemic has invited us into is this very Lutheran both/and way of seeing. For it is true that even our occasions for celebration carry deep within them, on the other side, a shadow…a tinge of lament. There is little in our lives that is without some measure of brokenness. And so in our sorrows, large and small, in our griefs deep and shallow, in our joys expansive and intimate….might this be both our affirmation of faith and our deep lament: I know that my redeemer lives.
This will be my spiritual practice in this season of Lent, then, to live in the understanding that God is alive and that God’s desire from before the dawn of Creation is abundant life for all. This is the belief to which my faith clings: that God was known in Jesus who walked this earth and in the Holy Spirit who is both comforter and advocate. Advocate. Redeemer.
Some years ago the choir in our congregation sang a beautiful arrangement of this text from Job 19. I’ve attached a YouTube link to another choir’s offering of the octavo that almost took my breath away. To see children sing these words: and though my body be destroyed, yet in my flesh shall I see God. In this arrangement, the music is soulful and drawn, even as the words ring out mournful Alleluias. For these ongoing days, this seems exactly right.
Dear Ones, there is brokenness and sorrow and sadness and loss enough for many seasons. We are walking in a path we did not expect to walk again in this way. The losses we have endured are many and varied. It may seem as though God has left us and that we are without an advocate. But Job invites us to this declaration of both faith and lament: our redeemer lives and even in the midst of our longings, we shall see God.
Here is the link. No identifying information was given on YouTube. The octavo is: I Know That My Redeemer Lives, arranged by Craig Courtney and published by Beckenhorst Press.
[1] Job 19: 23-27
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